Red America

“The people of the orient don’t think the same way about human life as we do.” That’s what was fed me in the Fifties when Red China was barely in the rear view mirror of my father’s car.

I hadn’t read this article yet. Of course, neither had I seen the film, Killing Fields.

I certainly knew that Adolf Hitler had been the worst man who had ever walked the earth … but if there was an oriental Hitler … well … the people of the orient don’t think the same way about human life as we do.

Concentrated as I was on becoming a Rebel Without A Cause and some bizarrely distant parent to the Birth of the Cool, Mao Zedong was as relevant to me as pork fried rice to a teenager being raised on steaks.

Today, in BIG PEACE, I saw the following map of lands and islands surrounding the South China Sea.

Discussing disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea, Mr. Xenakis writes:

This is a story that’s been growing in importance for almost 15 years. The bottom line is that China claims that, for historical reasons, all of the islands in the South China Sea are part of Chinese territory, just as if they were part of the Chinese mainland.

The story of Red China has been in the back of my own mind for at least five decades. Well … what was gnawing at the back of my mind all those years was the statement: “The people of the orient don’t think the same way about human life as we do.”

It was on BIG HOLLYWOOD that I met, for the first time … as far as I can tell or know … a Chinese Communist … a Maoist actually. I don’t think her name is important since I assume there must be, in (and from) a nation the size of China – over one billion human beings – a few devout Communists.

There certainly is at least one Chinese Communist … Maoist … living in New York City, studying law at NYU. She began writing me, objecting to my opinions of Mao Zedong during my series, Marlon’s Mao.

Eventually a Chinese American, reading our debates in BIG HOLLYWOOD, began to support my opinion of Mao Zedong, an estimation that was largely built upon the copious research of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.

This Chinese American, like Jung Chang, had stories to tell about what Mao had done to his family. Mao: The Unknown Story is so horrifying I haven’t been able to finish reading it.

“The people of the orient don’t think the same way about human life as we do.”

Tell that to the victims of Pol Pot in Cambodia, the families who are still weeping over the relatively light sentencing on the Killing Fields executioner, Kaing Guek Eav–also known as Duch. Well, Duch’s boss? Pol Pot?

He lived out his natural life protected by Mao Zedong.

“The people of the orient don’t think the same way about human life as we do.”

No.

That is not true.

After six decades of living with that dismissive lie, I can honestly say, with absolute certainty, that Communists don’t think the same way about human life as we do.

That is an utterly incontestable fact of the infinitely tragic 20^th Century.

The Soviet Story (view all of it!) is as excruciatingly unbearable as Jung Chang’s Mao Zedong: The Untold Story.

Communists don’t think the same way about human life as we do.

Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Jong Il? They … and their Communist followers … haven’t thought the same way about life as we have. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez?

They do not think the same way about life as we do.

Why? They are Communist.

And the admirers of Mao Zedong in the White House?

I suspect they have at least begun … to not think about human life in the same way we do.

They are not Red Chinese but Red Americans. I knew a Red American once. A lawyer … very much like both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Very charming.

At first sight, of course, you’d never believe that he didn’t think about human life in the same way I do … but … well … he didn’t … and, I suspect, still doesn’t. He was a big fan of Sendero Luminoso – The Shining Path – also known as the Communist Party of Peru.

Now looking back to that map of the South China Sea and the disputed boundaries between Communism and the Free World? Knowing that there are Pink, if not Red Americans in high places? This bit of brinksmanship going on not far from the coasts of North Korea and the travel lanes of the South China Sea?

And considering the fact that Communists do not think about human life in the same way as we do?

All this mutually shared bravado out of North Korea’s Soul and Red China’s Beijing … and out of the Obama/Clinton State Department of Washington as well? These naval maneuvers? This “brinksmanship?” Daredevil militancy out of the Democratic Party? A political conglomerate more commonly known as The Doves?

Why? And why now?

This blustering, of course, would have nothing to do with the Democratic Party’s falling popularity – would it? I know politicians like to change the subject when they’re in trouble … but starting a war to do it? With a well-known atomic power?

A war … a big one … possibly a World War would certainly suspend the American elections!

Nawwwwwwwww …. they couldn’t be thinking like that?

But then again … Communists … don’t think about human life …